Looking good Toolshed , Thats a canny casting project and I fully understand the time ,effort and skill involved in producing that casting

There is only one thing that spoils your good work , the photo is out of focus , if you had only took the time to stop and think , looks like you have set the shot up on a chair . if you have had rest your arms on the chair back to steady yourself and took the shot ,this also would have framed your work better , take several shots in this digital age and picked the best of the bunch .

Above is meant to be constructive ,not a dig . I see lots of lads good work spoiled by bad photos .

It's a question of naming conventions again. The Romans used what today is called a sling. The slingshot mentioned refers to the forked stick design with rubber bands. These couldn't have really come in until vulcanized rubber was commonly available - probably not until the first inner tubes wore out and were replaced.Perhaps we should post pictures of slings, staff slings, slingshots, and various ancient weapons that used either torsion, flat spring, or gravity to propel objects - each captioned with its currently accepted name, but that seems like overkill.

This thread brings back great childhood memories of cutting forked branches off trees and ripping up bicycle inner tubes to make catapults (or slingshots). Guava trees made the best handles. If you were were posh, you bought square rubber cords instead of using strips of inner tube.

I bought one from a local craftsman a few years back to do some plinking but I never used it because I feel bad about scattering lead or steel balls in the environment. Does anyone have any suggestions for environmentally friendly ammo that is consistent enough for target practice? It would be nice to relive some childhood memories

We would use what is called pebbles or gravel, as near to eviro friendly as you could get. We seldom here in our patch used a forked stick but used single length strip of bicycle tube with the pocket (?) tied at the back. Very accurate but a misfire certainly had its moments. Best thing was it was easy to put in your pocket and have fun to and from school. Ahhh the days of our youth.... wouldn't be dead for quids. The rubber(?) tubes now seem a lot less stretchy.Pete

They are known as catapults here in the UK and we always made from a fork stick cut from our privet hedge in the garden, we used 3/16 or 1/4 square rubber which we purchased from our local sports shop and a yard length always worked out about 34ins. long, a nasty piece of work was Mr White.

We had the original "Whammo" slingshots in addition to the home made ones. The dumbest thing I remember doing with one was to shoot a 1/4 inch steel ball (standard Whammo ammo) straight up. You can see it go a ways and then disappear ... quick run in the house so as to not get hit on the head.

I recall 'Catty-Why's' usually made from a bit of planking. The rubber was either push bike inner tubing or posher square rubber. There was also 'carbide guns' made from the calcium carbide bits from coal miners knocking the remains from miner's lamps when they 'came to bank'. We put it in lemonade bottles and urinated in it, to fire the corks.I'm quite ancient and we had steel ink pens and ink. This was about 1940-41 and there still pre-war rubber bands which could be joined up and would fire broken nibs. The Y was made from finger and thumb. There was a time when one missed the headmaster and impaled itself in the blackboard. I had a rather interesting childhood. One graduated into- Borstal( or others in my class did)

The most serious remark- however- is the origin of 'ballistics' and I would put it- not in the Romans- but in the Balearic Islands( Balleares, Espana) whose incumbents were the stone throwers to the Roman Armies. Certainly, there was and is plenty of limestone available.

And then there was 9mm Sten guns- made for 'half a dollar' from bed springs and steel piping. Another misspent youthful activity.

Nowadays we have sheets of latex we cut our bands from. Still use mostly leather pouches. Ammo is all over the place from rocks -- we have competitions called "Dennis the menace" where you try to hit a target using NON UNIFORM rocks. Even the best can barely hit 1 or 2 times -- marbles, steel ball bearings, lead of all shapes (though this isn't all that common), basically anything that can fly somewhat straight.